Cat's Eye Nebula

Cat's Eye Nebula

Emission nebula
Planetary nebula
Composite image using optical images from the HST and X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Observation data: J2000 epoch
Right ascension	17h 58m 33.423s[1]
Declination	+66° 37′ 59.52″[1]
Distance	3.3±0.9 kly (1.0±0.3 kpc)[2] ly
Apparent magnitude (V)	9.8B[1]
Apparent dimensions (V)	Core: 20″[2]
Constellation	Draco
Physical characteristics
Radius	Core: 0.2 ly[note 1] ly
Absolute magnitude (V)	−0.2+0.8 −0.6B[note 2]
Notable features	complex structure
Designations	NGC 6543,[1] Snail Nebula,[1] Sunflower Nebula,[1] (includes IC 4677),[1] Caldwell 6
See also: Lists of nebulae

The Cat's Eye Nebula (also known as NGC 6543 and Caldwell 6) is a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Draco, discovered by William Herschel on February 15, 1786. It was the first planetary nebula whose spectrum was investigated by the English amateur astronomer William Huggins, demonstrating that planetary nebulae were gaseous and not stellar in nature. Structurally, the object has had high-resolution images by the Hubble Space Telescope revealing knots, jets, bubbles and complex arcs, being illuminated by the central hot planetary nebula nucleus (PNN).^[3] It is a well-studied object that has been observed from radio to X-ray wavelengths.

Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).